I'm Getting my Root Canal Out!
Over 10 years ago I started having tooth pain. It was horrible. The first dentist only did an x-ray where the pain was and found nothing wrong. Needless to say the problem tooth was referring pain and after a few months I ended up with a root canal. Over the past few years I’ve learned about the potential harm they can cause especially if not done correctly. I have no pain or symptoms but recently found out my thyroid antibodies are elevated on some routine labs. A root canal the tooth has been devitalized, and can no longer perform the functions of cleansing, repair, and growth. A root-canaled tooth is considered a dead tooth. Root canals may leave bacteria behind, which could cause an abscess and possibly contribute to chronic health problems further down the road. This can tax the immune system.
I had a cone beam scan done to make sure I don’t have any other issues where my wisdom teeth were and thankfully everything looks good!
The dentist I am seeing is Dr. Holly Thompson at Natural Smiles Dentistry in Shoreview. I’m so excited to have this out. She will put a zirconia implant in where the root canal was. I’ve had many ask what do to in place of a root canal if it is needed, and I would go straight to an implant.
Here is how she explained the problem to me and just because my cone beam scan looked “ok” doesn’t mean it’s not causing issues.
“It’s a dead organ and creates stagnation in the body that equals lactic acid buildup in that area which attracts bacteria to dead tooth. Teeth have pores that are 3 nm called dentin tubules and bacteria are up to 1 nm so an analogy: mouse through a mouse hole. Bacteria builds up inside tooth and continues to release cytokines and toxic byproducts/infection that get into our lymphatics, then blood stream. The macrophages in our body are 25-50 nm and they fight bacteria but they are like the cat that can’t get to the mice in the mouse hole so mice (bacteria) keep proliferating and it just gets nasty gangrene and eventually enough infection shows up on scan. A healthy immune system can fight it off for awhile but only for so long. This constant fighting off of something constant in the body has led to a huge rise in autoimmune disease as well.”